The cars were there. The audience.
Guitar cases were on the porch. The musicians.
Hats were on the piano. An attitude.Note CDs. The modern world.
Everybody had gathered at a friend's house for a musical evocation of a time that is quickly fading.Not folk music. (That's for college students, folklorists and NPR.)
Not country music. (After all, in Nashville, today's semi takes the place of yesterday's trains.)
No, western music. Ballads of cowboys, their horses, their women, their sorrows, their sunsets, their camp sites, their gambling and, alas, their passing.
Jim Jones and Jim Wilson sang of a West more rugged yet gentler than sprawling desert suburbs and boutique mountain towns. Curious. I had forgotten how different cowboy music is from 2006's besequined country style. One of the Jims mentioned that "western" had been written out of "country and western" by the Grand Old Opry a long time back. Too bad.
What I heard Sunday night was a lot closer to folk music in style and content, yet modern. Makes sense: the two Jims are part of the cowboy poet scene. They hail from near Albuquerque and from Alpine in West Texas. Currently, they are making a tour presenting house concerts in people's homes.
I found myself wondering if any young people listen to this kind of music. Probably not -- they are ignorant of history!
After the concert, people talked, visited with the performing Jims...
...and had their new CDs autographed.Thanks, Georgene, for a memorable evening. Next year?
Wish I'd been there.
ReplyDeleteHermano
I love house concerts and my favorite Western song is Gail Gardner's "Sierry Petes."
ReplyDeleteI always start tapping my toes and laughing as they ". . . starts her out the Kentucky Bar at the top of the Whiskey Row."
Christian Smith and I are working on a sketch for the Day of the Dead Dinner Show that is set in that bar. We'll see if it makes the cut.
Sounds like fun -- where was the Kentucky Bar?
ReplyDeleteAs for my hermano, I wish he was here, too!
Howdy all:
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see that Jim Jones is out there, doing the house concerts and having fun. I performed with him at the Montana Wild West Fest in Helena, Montana last Labor Day weekend and he is a great guy. I like his CDs (almost) as much as i like my own!
Many of us do house Concerts while we are on the road. It really helps with the expenses when traveling between the Coffee House/Dinner show/Cowboy Entertainer Gathering gigs that most of us do.
Maybe one of my friends or I will be in your area sometime and can get a chance to perform for you!
Always glad to see some of our fans out there. www.cowboyentertainer.com